Cor Bellator (Warrior's Heart)
by Umbra Magna
Summary: General Grievous has been put in charge of investigating a new terrorist group known as the Mortax, but he is continuously haunted by memories of his past. When his droids capture a mysterious girl on the devastated planet Dracoria, Grievous must face his inner demons once more. This is the true test of the heart of a warrior.


General Grievous paced the deck of the _Eviscerator's_ forward command bridge, impatiently awaiting the return of Squad Six. Where were they? Soon Count Dooku would be asking for a full report of the attack via holocom, and Grievous did not want to be held responsible for his squad's tardiness. To him, droids were a liability, not an asset, and though they could be quite efficient on the battlefield, they were expensive. Count Dooku had become very concerned with the cost that the wretched machines had been racking up lately.

But money, in Grievous's opinion, was hardly an issue. It was the droids themselves that were the problem. Yes, they could fight, and yes, they served the Separatists' purposes well. But they were hardly what one could call warriors. They had no common bond. No heart.

Only programming.

How he longed for his old elite, the Izvoshra. They had been the most capable warriors he'd ever known, but they had been more than just soldiers under his command. They had been his friends, and they had felt the same anger that Grievous had toward the Huk and toward the Republic for their brutality to the Kaleesh. Grievous remembered one warrior in particular: Koorvan Tirall, an expert swordsman and courageous soldier. Tirall had been married, Grievous recalled, to a Sha'Koran woman named Anteia, whom Tirall had met on Dracoria while on a mission to fend off the Huk that resided there. He knew Tirall would do anything to protect Anteia and everyone else he cared about from the Huk, no matter what it took.

It ended up taking his life.

In the middle years of the Huk War, Tirall had been mortally wounded by a gunshot to the heart. Grievous had rushed over to try to help him, but it had been too late. He remembered the last word Tirall had uttered before he'd died.

"Dymir…"

_Dymir_. Grievous had no idea what that meant. It wasn't a Kaleesh word; it might have been Sha'Koran. Still, what did it _mean_? Grievous had been puzzling over this mystery for nearly two years. Tirall had said it mournfully, yet reverently, as if he were very worried about something—or someone—he cared about. But who? Anteia had died months earlier in a revolution on Dracoria, as the Dracorian government had been reorganized into a dictatorship and buildings had been bombed by Mortax terrorists. But Grievous didn't know of anyone else whom Tirall could've been worried about. Most of his relatives had died, and Tirall didn't have any children.

Did he?

But surely Tirall would have told him. Wouldn't he?

Suddenly the door at the back of the room opened, interrupting Grievous's vagaries, and Squad Six came onto the bridge. Grievous waited, expecting to see a tall, muscular man bound at the wrists by electrobonds, as that was what most of the remaining people of Dracoria looked like, but he couldn't see anyone; the prisoner must have been standing behind one of the bulkheads, ashamed at being taken captive.

"Well," said Grievous. "Show me the prisoner."

A very young female Sha'Koran stepped out from among the droids. She was small and somewhat pale, and her dark clothes, short dark hair, and dark eyes seemed to augment her pallor. The girl wore a very dark, waist-revealing shirt with long sleeves and a long dark skirt. She had distinctive violet Sha'Koran markings on her stomach and below her eyes, and her black cloak billowed behind her as she walked forward. She also had on sleek, dark metallic boots, which sent an eerie echoing sound across the room as she stepped forward.

Grievous walked over to where the girl now stood with Squad Six. He knew she could tell he was angry, though she showed no fear. "What is the meaning of this?" he said. "How do you fools expect me to get any of the Mortax's secrets from a simple-minded _child_?" He then knocked the head off the droid leader with a swipe of his hand, as if he were simply swatting away a fly. The girl had obviously not witnessed that kind of strength before, as her eyes widened slightly in surprise. The other droids, not wishing to suffer the same fate as their leader, rushed out the door as quickly as they could.

Grievous then fixed the girl with a glare that would have frozen the lava rivers on Mustafar. "Your Mortax Revolution is at an end, little one. Now you will tell me all that I wish to know."

"Very well," said the girl calmly, "Although I must inform you that I am not a member of the Mortax; this is not _my_ revolution."

Before Grievous could respond, a nearby droid said, "Incoming transmission, sir. It's Count Dooku."

Grievous nodded to the droid. "Put him on."

The holographic image of Count Dooku appeared in the middle of the room. "General," he said. "Have you succeeded in your capture of Dracoria?"

"Yes, Count," Grievous replied. "All Mortax threat has been eliminated, except for one survivor."

"Who?"

Grievous dragged the girl a little roughly to the middle of the bridge. "This is an outrage," he said to Dooku. "All we have to answer our questions is this impertinent little child."

"I'm thirteen," the girl said, but no one seemed to hear her.

Dooku regarded the girl with a slight air of curiosity. "Is she a member of the Mortax?"

"She denies it," Grievous answered, "but I believe she might be."

"I'm not!" the girl asserted.

Ignoring her, Grievous said, "What am I to do with her? It is quite obvious that she will not tell me what I need to know voluntarily. Shall I implement…other methods of persuasion?"

"If you must," said Dooku, his voice inhumanly indifferent. "Continue with the interrogation, but do not kill her. Do you understand, Grievous? I want her _alive_."

"Yes, Count," Grievous replied.

"Good," Dooku said. "Carry on." And the holographic image faded away.

The girl walked to the center of the room, looked Grievous in the eyes, and said, "I'm not a member of the Mortax and I can prove it."

Grievous stared at her in indignation, almost tempted to disobey Dooku's orders about keeping her alive. _Almost_. There was something about this girl that seemed strange and powerful to him. And he didn't like it. So he dragged her by the wrist through a door on the side of the bridge, leading her down a short corridor to a small interrogation room.

The room was dark, like most of the rooms on the ship. The walls were a bluish gray color. There was nothing in the room except a table, two chairs, and a control panel for emergencies. Grievous forced the girl into one of the chairs, then took his seat in the other. "You say you can prove you're not with the Mortax," he said to her. "Go ahead before I change my mind."

"The Mortax," the girl said calmly, "have a ritual where they pour a toxic chemical on their skin. They call it_ ignia quora_. It's extremely deadly, and if it's brought into contact with certain elements, it can start a dangerous chemical reaction in the skin, which can lead to serious rash, illness, or even death."

She paused to make sure Grievous was listening. Then she continued, "The _i__gnia quora _is absorbed into the skin, and it's permanent. It's kind of like a tattoo. All the Mortax members are marked this way so they can tell who's a member and who's not. If you expose me to the required elements, you won't find any sign of the toxin."

Grievous wasn't convinced. _She's a smart one,_ he thought. _But she won't be able to lie her way out of my grasp._ He strode over to where the girl stood and glared at her menacingly. "Do you know the penalty for lying?"

"I am not lying," the girl replied.

"I don't believe you." And almost from pure reflex, Grievous ignited two lightsabers and held them at the girl's throat. But she showed no fear; she reached for her belt and drew her own blade, eyes trained on the indignant general. "I'm a trained warrior," she said fiercely. "Don't think I don't know how to use this."

Grievous looked at the saber in the girl's hand. It had a yellow blade, and the hilt was engraved with strange letters. He'd seen that saber before, and he was shocked when he remembered where he'd seen it. "Where did you get that?" he demanded.

"On Dracoria," she replied.

"_You're lying!_" Grievous yelled at her. "That lightsaber belongs to Gnorus Rakshorii! I've fought him myself!"

"I know who Rakshorii is," the girl said. "I killed him."

Grievous just stared at her for a moment, stunned. _She obviously won't give it up,_ he thought. _Could she be telling the truth?_ On one hand, he couldn't believe that a thirteen-year-old girl could have defeated Gnorus Rakshorii. On the other hand, there was a look of truth on the girl's face, a look he'd often seen on the faces of his troops on Kalee. He hadn't seen that look in ages. Still, he had his doubts. At any rate, he decided to play along for the moment and said, "You certainly are persistent. Even if you did kill Rakshorii, what reason could _you_ have to do so?"

The girl looked pained for a second, as if what the general had said had brought back a painful memory. But she soon gathered her old composure and said, "He was a dangerous man. He killed hundreds of people. _My _people. I had to do something."

Grievous felt a small twinge of empathy with the girl, remembering the Huk's massacre of the people on Kalee, and how the Jedi had actually _aided_ those disgusting insects in the destruction of the Kaleesh homeworld. The memories, long held in the back of his mind, came rushing back to him like a sudden gust of wind. But as fast as they came he pushed them back again, and, refocusing his attention on the girl, said, "How on earth did you defeat him?"

"I-I don't know," she answered. "I mean, I trained for a long time to prepare for my encounter with Rakshorii. I guess I just outsmarted him or something. But I think it had something to do with this." The girl revealed a dark-colored bracelet on her left wrist. In the center lay a small triangular crystal, dark as space; yet it sent out a small dark glow. "It's a fragment of one of the legendary ancient crystals," she explained. "The crystals can—"

"—give their users power," Grievous finished for her. "I know. I've heard of these crystals before. Do you know which crystal is in that bracelet of yours?"

"No, sir," she replied. "But I know it's very valuable—well, to me, anyway. After I found it, I could send bursts of dark energy toward my opponents and blind them for a few seconds."

"Vorix—the Crystal of Darkness." Grievous lowered his sabers and deactivated them. He could tell she was telling the truth. He looked curiously at the girl for a moment. "To have defeated Rakshorii would have taken a large amount of skill," he finally said. "What is your fighting style?"

"Vindex," the girl answered.

"I've never heard of it," said Grievous. "Show me."

"Gladly."

The girl swirled and spun her saber in a flurry of strikes and slashes, cutting down the two droids sitting at the ship's controls behind her. The rest of the droids, sensing the threat the young girl presented, opened fire, but the little Sha'Koran deflected the blaster bolts with ease, spinning her lightsaber in such a manner that it looked more like a great yellow blur. She rushed up to one of the droids, still deflecting blaster bolts, and kicked it in the chest. It was a quick, hasty kick, not very strong, just a diversionary tactic to distract the droid while she sliced its head off. _She relies too much on speed and diversion_, Grievous thought as he watched the girl's demonstration. _That could be a problem_.

The girl pursued the firing droids relentlessly, and in doing so she caused a lot of damage to the room. She practically left the entire bridge in ruins, including the holocom in the middle of the room. Sparks shot up into the air as the machine malfunctioned. Then it spewed out one final blast of sparks and stopped working altogether. The girl continued her demonstration, obliterating control panels and scarring bulkheads as she dashed and twirled and destroyed.

She finished off the last droid with what appeared to be her signature move: she did a backflip, landed behind the droid, and swept both of her arms to the sides, cutting the droid in half. She stood, frozen, in that position for a few moments, then deactivated her lightsaber and waited for the astounded general to reply.

"Impressive," Grievous said. "Most impressive. Perhaps you are not completely useless after all."

The girl said nothing but regarded the general with a small nod.

"One more thing," Grievous said. "Tell me your name."

There was a short pause before the girl finally answered him. "Dymir Tirall."


End file.
